Previous prep recruiting and transfer issues

Madison High School must forfeit all but one football game from its championship season last year after a state panel denied the school’s appeal of those forfeitures this week, according to the CIF’s San Diego Section.

Section Commissioner Dennis Ackerman ruled in January that Madison must forfeit the games after finding that quarterback Chase Knox had made an invalid change of residence from Arizona. The San Diego Unified School District appealed that ruling on behalf of Madison, but the California Interscholastic Federation's appeals panel this week notified the parties by phone that it was upholding Ackerman’s decision, said Dino Buzunis, an attorney for the section.

As a result, Madison loses all games in which Knox played, including its 40-14 win over Valley Center for the section Division IV championship. The decision also becomes the latest chapter in an ongoing fight between the section and the district that might not end any time soon.

“This is serious stuff,” Buzunis said.

In one corner, Ackerman ruled in January that Knox was ineligible for the 2010 and 2011 football seasons. That ruling said that Knox’s move was athletically motivated and that Knox made an invalid change of residence. To bolster their case with the appeals panel, section officials again used a private investigator to gather additional evidence in the case. That evidence then led to a pointed letter this week from Buzunis to the district, asking it to further investigate Knox’s move to Madison last year from Brophy, a parochial school in Phoenix.

In the other corner, Bob Ottilie, Knox’s attorney, called Buzunis’ letter “the most threatening letter I’ve ever seen from an attorney.” Ottilie said the matter of Knox’s motivation for transfer already was resolved with a prior ruling by a different state appeals panel. In March, that panel determined there wasn’t enough evidence to support Ackerman’s January finding that Knox’s move was athletically motivated. The panel concluded a “significant motivation” for Knox to transfer was to be closer to his biological father.

It was a split decision for Knox and Madison. As a result of that March ruling, Knox was allowed to be eligible for the 2011 season. But the same panel found then that he made an invalid change of residence because his parents don’t live in the same home more than half of the week. That finding is what led to Madison’s forfeits.

Ottilie said he may go to Superior Court to set aside the decision on Knox’s residence, which could set aside the forfeits. Ottilie’s argument is that the stepfather commutes from San Diego to Arizona to work until he’s transferred here on a more permanent basis.

An attorney for the school district declined to comment until the district receives the written version of the appeals panel’s decision to uphold the forfeits.

The appeals panel that decided on Knox’s eligibility in March said it had a “very strong opinion that Madison High School had not done their due diligence in this case with an appropriate investigation of the transfer status of Knox.”